


and now i know my heart is a ghost town

by xxpaynoxx



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, sick!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:05:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6988015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxpaynoxx/pseuds/xxpaynoxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jordan leaves. Adam falls apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and now i know my heart is a ghost town

**Author's Note:**

> Since the Hendollana tag is lacking, I decided to publish this little fic that's been sitting in the WIP section of my Google Drive for a while.

It’s a humid July morning when Jordan leaves.

Adam tastes whiskey on his lips, the bottle it came from dangling from his fingertips as he jolts awake. He’s spread-eagled on the bed, sheets tangled around his middle and locking him in a coffin of warmth and stickiness from sweating in the humidity. It takes him a few seconds to realize where he is, before he stretches across the mattress and hits air on the other side of the bed.

It’s normal for Jordan to leave early, with his job and everything, but Adam is still confused as to why there’s whiskey in his hand. Jordan doesn’t even _like_ whiskey.

Eventually, he drags himself out of bed, placing the bottle down on the side table with a clink and runs his fingers through his hair, rubbing at his face (lightly, because it hurts to touch his face for some reason) as he staggers his way out of the room and into the kitchen.

He’s halfway through making his cup of tea when he realizes the house seems empty.

_The air conditioner is off._

Adam makes his way back upstairs, sipping at his cup of tea when he gets to the bedroom again, and takes a closer look at the room. He’s missed something, he definitely has. Jordan never leaves without telling him, and he never turns the AC off. It gets so cold in the house because of it, but Adam doesn’t mind when Jordan cuddles him close under the four blankets he likes on top of them.

Jordan’s side of the room is bare. Everything is gone; the drawers are open and empty,

The mug smashes onto the floor, and Adam follows soon after, running his hands over his face as he falls to his knees, trying to remember what happened the night before.

“No, no, no,” he starts mumbling under his breath, pushing himself so he’s sitting down with his back against the doorframe, a hand still covering his eyes.

His finger brushes over a bruise on his face, and he winces, and it all comes back.

They had fought. He can’t remember over what, but he does remember Jordan yelling at him and punching him until there was blood on Adam’s chin and his eyesight was blurry. He remembers crying; they both cried, and then Adam had told him to leave.

He told him to leave and never come back.

“Fuck,” he whispers shakily, slowly getting up and walking over to the dresser, running his hand across the wood.

There’s a slip of paper with writing on it, lying on top of the dresser. It’s folded up, but Adam’s name in strong cursive is prominently standing out against the white paper.

It’s a letter, Adam realizes as he snatches it up and opens it, and it’s in Jordan’s long, curvy handwriting. He can barely read the letter through his blurry vision from the tears forming in his eyes, but he catches the phrases _we need a break_ and _i’m sorry_ and _you’re better off without me_.

(Which is a lie, it’s a fucking white lie and Adam knows that, and it _hurts_.)

So Adam ends up on the floor again, wiping his tears on the sleeve of Jordan’s sweatshirt that he realizes he’s still wearing from yesterday (it still smells like him too, which feels like he’s just adding salt into his own wounds).

He sits, and he cries, because that’s all he can do.

* * *

That was five months ago.

Adam still sleeps in Jordan’s sweatshirt, the same one he woke up in the day Jordan left. He hasn’t gotten any contact, doesn’t even know if Jordan is alive at this point. He doesn’t hook up with anyone, even though Sturridge tries to convince him that’s probably one of the better options to take.

He brings it up when he’s on the phone with him, about Jordan.

Technically, Sturridge brings it up first, but Adam starts talking and then he starts crying and fuck, it’s been over five months without him and Adam still hurts, he still burns and he doesn’t know what to do.

Sturridge lets him talk, lets him scream and cry into the phone, and when Adam is completely spent, he speaks.

“I think you should find someone else. Seriously, Ads, this is unhealthy. I hate to see you like this, and I know Jordan was everything to you, but you’ve gotta move on from that.”

But Adam can’t. He’s tried, he’s gone out to pubs and tried to see people he’d be interested in, but nobody compares to Jordan. Nobody talks to him like Jordan did, nobody looks at him like Jordan did.

Every night he goes home, stumbling drunk from the unhealthy amount of rum he’s ingested those past few hours, landing onto the bed wearing Jordan’s stupid sweatshirt and curling up and crying, because _why can’t he just get out of my head._

* * *

It’s a chilly December morning when Adam realizes that he’s sick.

He knows as soon as he wakes up with shivers (even though he’s wrapped up underneath _four_ blankets). He has a fever, his throat hurts, his eyesight is blurry, but he doesn’t want to go to the doctor. He can’t even see straight through the haze of heat and tremors his body goes through, and he refuses to take Jordan’s sweatshirt off. None of the lads know he’s sick; he just calls in and asks for another day, the receptionist sighing and telling him _you can’t keep doing this_ , but Adam hangs up before she can say it.

He swears he hallucinates when he hears a knock on the door. Nobody knocks anymore; Sturridge barges in, typically accompanied by Sterling trailing behind him like a puppy; Coutinho and Firmino will come in softly, closing the door behind him and carrying that day’s groceries or something of that sort; Milner would ring the doorbell rather than knock, because apparently he’s Adam’s only friend with manners.

But no, Adam realizes that someone is _actually_ knocking on the door, and he drags himself out of bed, ignoring the airy feeling in his head and the black edging at his vision as he goes to open the door.

He immediately runs into a barrel chest in a nice cotton shirt, and Adam doesn’t even look up before his legs are giving out underneath him, his head on a one-way collision course with the kitchen floor before the person’s hand is on his head and it’s turning his face to look up and-

It’s Jordan.

The laugh bubbles slowly in his chest at first, and then he really does laugh; he laughs a long, dry laugh, cupping apparition-Jordan’s face and shaking his head. “Oh my God, no, I’m dead and this is heaven, isn’t it?” he says to himself, and he can barely see Jordan’s face properly through his skewed vision.

Jordan is saying something, and Adam feels himself getting picked up and placed down on the couch, the fluffy pillow his mum gave him when he first moved in that still smells of her cat placed behind his head. He’s coughing now, and he feels some fluid dribbling down his chin and he’s praying it’s not blood, because he couldn’t let Jordan, apparition or not, see him like this, like a mess.

“Adam, oh my God, what have you _done_ to yourself?” he hears Jordan whisper, feels Jordan’s fingers prodding at his neck and feeling his forehead and pressing against his temples and running through his sweaty hair, and Adam wants to sleep. He starts to shut his eyes when Jordan suddenly shakes him awake again, and Adam groans.

“Hendo, or whatever kind of fucking weird-ass angel spirit thing you are, please, leave me alone and let me die in peace,” he mumbles, his eyelids slipping shut, and he feels Jordan’s fingers intertwine with his own and hears him whisper in his ear before he passes out completely.

_“No, I’m never doing that again.”_

* * *

Adam wakes up with a clear head and the sun shining through his window.

He doesn’t get up at first, just lays on the bed with his eyes shut, feeling the crisp, soft sheets against his bare skin and the sun on his face, warming him up and making him sleepier.

Finally, Adam does open his eyes, looking over at the date and freezing up.

He’d been out of it for _two days._

He doesn’t remember much; the fever took care of those awful memories by tucking them away in the corner of his groggy mind, but he remembers a face, always there in front of him and touching his head and making him swallow shitty medicine.

There’s a shower running, but it turns off and light footsteps echo in the room as Adam rolls over onto his front, breathing in through his clear nose and bunching the pillow in front of his between his arms. He feels someone sit on the side of the bed, feels the mattress dip and he twitches as that someone’s fingers brush against his jaw.

He opens his eyes, and sees Jordan.

He looks exactly the same; his hair is a tad shorter, probably because he went to a different barber. His eyes have bags underneath of them, but his smile is still the same as he brushes Adam’s bangs off of his forehead to lean down and give him a kiss.

The question is there, on the tip of Adam’s tongue, but he doesn’t want to ask it. He can’t make himself say it, and he doesn’t even know if he can speak properly from not talking for two days.

Jordan answers it for him.

“I heard things. From the lads. Sturridge told me you hadn’t been holding up so well. I didn’t want to come back and make everything worse. I didn’t think I deserved to just drop back into your life like that. But then Coutinho called me and told me you hadn’t been at work, and I…I don’t know, I just decided to not think and just come by and I found you like this and _God_ , Adam, I thought you were going to die and-”

Adam suddenly moves, tugging Jordan down and slotting their lips together. “Stop talking,” he whispers, and he feels Jordan smiles against his lips as he stretches out above him, knees on either side of Adam’s hips with stray fingers tracing the intricate tattoo along his side.

There will be plenty of time to talk, to discuss why Jordan really left and how badly Adam wants him to stay, how they move on from here, what happens next.

But for now, Adam is content to just kiss Jordan, to feel him moaning into his mouth and curving into his touch, to remember what it feels like when his heart is full.


End file.
